Empirical Gnollage: Installment 81 [https://squirrel.dogphilosophy.net/Installment081.png]

Wikwocket moved silently up the steps. Gruntle carefully backed a few steps down towards her and slowly brought his shield down from his shoulder to his left hand. Wikwocket crouched next to him as he reached up to his collar. The faint clink of the buckle striking the stone step as the collar came off was immediately washed out by the eager bloodthirsty gnollish bark-laughter and the startled shouts of goblins as Gruntle charged up into the dark room, followed closely by Wikwocket. Al sprinted up the steps as quickly as he could, torch in his left hand and Purgatio in his right. He heard Bote stomping up the steps behind him as he reached the top.

Al's flickering torch lit the scene. The 10-paces-square room had a wooden countertop to the left, a few round wooden tables and simple chairs were ahead of Al and to the right, and violence was throughout. One hide-clad goblin lay smashed against the floor at the nearest table next to Gruntle, whose prominent teeth were chomping shut just a fingerwidth short of another goblin's neck and shoulder as the goblin stumbled and fell back beneath the table, slipping on blood that had spurted from a hole in another goblin's chest as Wikwocket pulled BiteySue back. Two more panicked goblins were reaching for spears propped against a nearby table.

Three more, Al noticed, were behind the serving counter, arms raising glass bottles to throw at the terrifying demon that had appeared from nowhere to kill them all. Caught up in the carnage, Al quickly tucked the flat of Purgatio's blade between his left arm and body to free his right hand, so he could conjure the fiery magical violence he'd taught himself. Al grinned vengefully as the three bolts of red flame obeyed his will and hurled themselves at the goblins behind the bar. One managed to throw itself back out of the way, but the goblin dropped the bottle to the floor and the liquor that had been inside splashed and caught fire itself as the deep red flame intended for the goblin brushed through the fumes. The other two goblins weren't so lucky. Shrieking and sizzling, they fell to the floor and went silent, bones exposed behind patches of charred and vaporized flesh. Al stepped to the side to get out of Bote's way as they followed up the steps into the room. The dwarf took in a hasty view of the room and planted themself next to Al with hammer ready, daring the last goblin behind the serving-counter to come closer. It bared its yellowed pointy little teeth at them and drew its crude sword, menacingly backlit by the dwindling blue flames of the spilled liquor as it boiled away. It shouted something hatefully at them. Then...it turned and ran out of sight around the far corner of the counter. Al tried to keep track of where the sound of its footsteps led. They seemed to have fled down a hallway at the leftmost wall.

The two goblins at the far table had grasped their spears, and they charged desperately at the madly laughing gnoll. Crouching low to get closer to their level, Gruntle caught one spear-thrust and knocked it aside with his shield. He caught the other in the side of his abdomen. The goblin's triumphant shout ended with a wet SPLUTCH! sound as the gnoll ignored the stab wound and stepped towards the startled goblin, bringing his flail down upon the goblin's head. Gruntle continued the motion, and this time the second goblin had no lucky escape. Small neck and shoulder bones crunched between the large gleaming teeth and the small green-skinned foe went limp.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The goblin facing Wikwocket underneath the table rolled quickly back to its feet, drawing its crude sword. It charged. Wikwocket shifted her rapier and dagger to parry the incoming blow, but the goblin apparently didn't feel like fighting. It simply swatted the points of her weaponry away from it as it sprinted past her with fear-enhanced speed, running to follow the other goblin down the hallway, where panicked goblin speech and grunting of effort could be heard, followed by the creaking of a door. Al grabbed Purgatio's hilt and released the sword from between his left arm and body, running after the fleeing goblins.

The sound of the door opening at the end of the hall was followed by the footsteps of the goblins fleeing into the dark room beyond as Al reached the start of the hallway. Frightened-sounding goblin speech suggested they didn't like what they found in there. Both of them screamed. There were sounds of struggle and one of the screams abruptly stopped. The other got louder as rapid small footsteps came back. A terrified goblin draped in cobwebs rushed back towards Al, seemingly hoping to simply rush past. Al carefully drew back Purgatio and swung. The goblin's scream became one last sigh of exhalation as the body collapsed, and the head bounced across the floor back into the room. Gruntle looked down the hallway, eyes black from fully-dilated pupils. The gnoll began to run after the last missing goblin.

"Gruntle, stop!" Al shouted in warning, but the gnoll barely hesitated. "Stop! It's some kind of trap!" Al tried, louder.

Gruntle huffed, slowing and stopping before he ran over Al. The gnoll looked frantically for more goblins. Seeing none, he relaxed, with some apparent reluctance. A long groan of relief came from his throat, and his eyes returned to their normal amber. Panting, Gruntle slowly hung his flail back on his belt and returned to walk a few steps down the stairs they'd come in from. He returned moments later, buckling his collar back around his neck.

Al knelt to examine the body of the one he'd decapitated. Thick, sticky webs clung to its body and limbs, and to Al's hands as he turned the body over. A small pair of shallow punctures in the goblin's side dripped blood through the hides the goblin wore. The webs melted away near the torch-flame as Al held it closer to look.

"Oh, good, more giant bugs," Wikwocket said sarcastically, peering down the hallway and into the next room. With his torchlight, Al could see that the entire doorway had been filled with webbing before the goblins pulled the door open and charged in. Now streamers of webbing hung from the inner side of the door and there was a large hole through it into the room.

Al shuddered as he though the could make out the movement of long black legs, turning a grey mass over and over deeper in the webs.

"We'll have to deal with it eventually," Al suggested, "but we don't necessarily have to do it immediately. If there are webs, that means it should stay in there and wait for food to show up instead of coming after us, right?"

They all watched for a while to make sure nothing was going to rush them. The sounds of movement that could occasionally be heard were eerily quiet. Eventually, Al thought he could see the webbing flex, and something within seemed to scuttle quietly further back into the darkness.

"Anybody feel like going down there and pushing the door shut?" Al asked hopefully.

"Nope!" Wikwocket replied.

"I cannot truthfully say I feel like tempting that which waits within, either," Bote agreed.

Gruntle strode past them all and down to the door, a few drops of blood from the stab in the side of his abdomen dripping along the floor as he went. He reached the door and pushed it shut. The door's closing was momentarily slowed by something thudding into it from the other side, but that didn't stop Gruntle from pushing the door the rest of the way until it was latched shut again.

"Thank you," Al said, "That should give us some time to decide what to do next."

"The goblins aren't part of the baths, right? So if they have anything valuable we can take it?" Wikwocket suggested, holding her nose with her left hand while she gingerly began pulling back headless body's crude clothing to see if there was anything worthwhile to find.

"I'm pretty sure that's true, yeah. Have fun with that," Al answered.

"I've had fun before, I'm pretty sure this isn't it."

For her troubles, Wikwocket found nothing especially useful on any of the goblins except, possibly, the short spears which seemed to be balanced well enough to throw. A search of the rest of the room revealed broken glass scattered around a door on the opposite side of the room from the hallway - which the goblins were apparently using as a target for the bottles they'd emptied - and a few more dusty glass bottles full of light amber liquid beneath the counter. Atop the counter, they also found a crude clay jug. Its amateurish quality, lack of dust, and the sloppiness of what seemed to represent a skull painted on the side in black pigment made it obvious that it wasn't of Elvish origin. It was stoppered with a piece of wood smeared thickly with some sort of animal fat.

"My gnomish intuition tells me that this jug contains something that we do not want to drink," she sagely observed.

"Your powers of deduction amaze me," Al deadpanned.

"I know, right? I'd say either there's poison in here, or powdered skulls. Either way, yuck."

"We can take it to an apothecary and see if we can find out what it is when we're done. If we assume those goblins brought it here, it can't be anything good. Until then, though, we should keep exploring. Do we want to try to do something about whatever horrible spider-thing is at the end of that hallway, or...?" Al asked. An anguished scream of frustration echoed up from somewhere beyond the stairs they'd come up, interrupting him. It lasted several seconds before fading out.

"Somebody's unhappy," Wikwocket observed.

"Or in trouble," Al said, heading for the stairs. "I think we should check it out."